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The subject‐matter of this article is the recently altered trade policy and practice of Australia and their consistency with the WTO multilateral trading policies and principles. Following its unhappy experience with the power and politics driven trading under GATT, Australia unequivocally supported the legalistic approach of the WTO trading system during the Uruguay Round. Its active participation in the WTO has given it a fair share of global free trade. The rule‐based trading framework of the WTO protects, more often than not, Australia from powerful trading states and blocs using their economic clout to gain unfair terms of trade. Australia has recently opted to pursue its multi‐track trading together with its commitments to WTO multilaterial trade liberalization. Since 2002, it has been negotiating a preferential bilateral free trade agreement with its preferred trading partners. The flurry of such negotiations has resulted in the conclusion of a preferential bilateral free trade agreement with Singapore in 2003. Negotiation towards a similar agreement with the U.S. is ongoing. A preferential trade agreement (PTA) is by nature discriminatory and as such inconsistent with the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) rule under GATT Article I. Despite this apparent contradiction, GATT Article XXIV permits bilateral PTAs as an exception to the MFN rule under certain explicit conditions, which militate against discriminatory, differential and unequal trading deals among WTO members. This article examines the extent to which the existing and potential PTAs of Australia comply with the conditions of GATT Article XXIV. It concludes that these PTAs are not complementary, if not obstructive alternatives, to the WTO multilateral free trading system. They are not in the best long‐term trading interest of Australia either.

European countries, which have many common policies and goals, are also having some disparities in their economic performance due to the existence of underlying country-specific reasons. The manufacturing sector is the key sector that promotes growth and increases the well-being of society. Thus, it is important to understand how these countries differ in engaging in industrial activities. Focusing on the manufacturing sectors of these economies, we aim to see the disparities between European Union (EU) countries in terms of their composition of manufacturing trade and the countries they are trading with. This chapter outlines some key stylized facts regarding trade over the past two decades by investigating the manufacturing data for EU countries.

The present study aims to determine the existence of simultaneous relationship between economic growth, income inequality, fiscal policy, and total trade of the 13 emerging market economies as a group for the period 1980–2010. After establishing the existence of simultaneity between the above relationships, a simultaneous panel model has been formulated and estimated incorporating the nonlinearity among the variables as suggested by the existing literature. An inverted U-shape relationship is evident between (1) economic growth, income inequality, and total trade in economic growth equation, (2) income inequality, economic growth, and per capita income in income inequality equation, and (3) total trade and economic growth in total trade equation. Thus, the existence of a two-way nonlinear relationship is highlighted between economic growth, income inequality, and total trade. Apart from these nonlinear relationships, positive and significant effect of (1) gross capital formation, inflation, population growth, human capital, fiscal policy, monetary policy, and domestic credit to private sector on economic growth; (2) civil liabilities on income inequality; (3) gross capital formation and inflation on total trade; (4) total trade, population growth of those aged 65 years and above, political system on fiscal policy is highlighted. Also, negative and significant effect of (1) fiscal policy on income inequality and (2) income inequality on fiscal policy is revealed.

Any country including India which has registered remarkable growth has done so by participating in the economic integration process led by global and regional trade liberalization. India has an emerging web of cooperation with East Asian countries, especially Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) through the ASEAN–India dialogue process, the bilateral free trade agreement with Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand and subregional initiatives such as the Mekong–Ganga Cooperation and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC; Yong 2005).

India's free trade agreements and regional trade agreements with countries in this region have not been models of success in their implementation even when there were benefits. The main idea of the formal trade negotiation was to enhance ASEAN-India partnership, specifically in the economic arena. However, India's position in ASEAN's external trade and investment flows has not yet experienced any special momentum. The two-way trade between India and ASEAN is tilted toward ASEAN with the trade gap expanding rapidly.

Thus, to understand India's trade with ASEAN, the chapter would examine India's trade prospects with the ASEAN-5 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam) particularly in merchandise trade. This chapter would identify new products that India can export to the ASEAN, which will increase its share in ASEAN's market. In order to achieve this, the chapter seeks to discuss the detailed microanalysis at HS 6-digit level to capture the trade creation effects based on lower unit value items for estimating product-specific potential exports and imports to/from ASEAN.

The USA–China trade confrontation has become a major concern for all the nations involved in international trade. The retaliatory trade policies taken by both of these major trading nations have generated widespread impact among the trading nations especially on the developing and emerging nations. In this chapter, the macro-theoretic model is developed to show how a trade war can potentially arise in the wake of economic downturn led by some demand contracting force in one of the countries having trade ties and in turn can cause the recession to leap into global turmoil. This may prompt the countries to be more protective and averse to international exchange, thereby paving way to more intense trade frictions among the nations and stoking international macroeconomic propagation. Thus, the present introspection hints at tariff war among the nations engaged in restricted trade with each other being a plausible consequence of macroeconomic fault having cross-country repercussion implication and that in turn becomes more pronounced in the present tariff war leading to more fierce trade frictions among the countries.

Two fundamental reasons that account for the domestic bias of consumption are distance and borders. Distance proxies for unobservable trading costs, which include, among other things, transport and administrative costs. Distance is a powerful deterrent to international trade. This fact is illustrated by considering the situation of Bahrain and Qatar, Belgium and India, and Indonesia and Guyana, which are, respectively, the closest (55.5mi), the median (4,414.7mi), and the farthest (12,351.1mi) country pairs in a large sample of bilateral trade flows (see Chapter 2). For Bahrain and Qatar, distance is estimated to reduce the estimate of bilateral trade flows by 39%; for Belgium and India, the reduction is 58%; for Indonesia and Guyana, the reduction is 121% (it exceeds the value of bilateral transactions). The success of the gravity model in explaining bilateral trade flows is due, to no small measure, to distance. For example, the standard trade model of complete specialization, without trading costs, makes two strong predictions. The first is that a country will import goods from all other countries in the world and the second that bilateral trade flows are proportional to the income of the two countries. Both predictions are way off the mark. Countries import from a small fraction of the potential pool of exporters and incomes alone over-predict actual trade flows by a large margin.

Economic integration is an agreement among countries in a geographical region or unification of economic policies between different states aiming to reduce and ultimately remove tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade. The fruit of globalization is the tremendous rise of economic integration as globalization loosens barriers among the nations through reduction in cross-border duties and eases trade policies. Trumponomics is defined as the economic policies of US President Donald Trump that prefers high import tariff to bring “America First.” There is a debate among the researchers about the choice between free trade and protection or imposition of tariff. Some of them prefer free trade because during the start of the great depression, the world economy experienced a huge shift toward protectionism. Choice between no-tariff and tariff represents a prisoner’s dilemma situation whereby each player’s best response is to employ tariffs. This results in a sub-optimal outcome for all where the total volume of world trade falls, which is a Nash solution. The present chapter deals with theoretical discussions on trade war and throws light on the developing country’s choice between non-protectionism supported by globalization and Trump’s protectionism.

The purpose of this research is to substantiate the processes of implementing the electronic forms of business integration under the conditions of digital transformation by market players.

The methods used in this research include cooperative game theory, systemic analysis and statistical analysis.

This research presents the substantiation of the processes of implementing the electronic forms of business integration under the conditions of digital transformation by market players. The proprietary methodology of evaluation of the set problems includes three procedures: analysis of the electronic forms of business integration that are used in the digital economy in the world, which envisages their systematisation; evaluation of the effectiveness of implementing the processes of business integration with the use of such forms and their forecast estimation under the condition of individual development of the market environment's players, as well as determination of advantages; and development of the practical implications for managing the electronic forms of business integration for the national companies of developing countries (with forecasting based on the cooperative game theory). The modern electronic forms of business integration include electronic cash (e-cash), electronic data interchange, electronic banking (e-banking), electronic marketing (e-marketing), electronic insurance (e-insurance) and electronic trade (e-trade). Analysis of the effectiveness of implementing the processes of business integration with the use of the electronic forms is performed based on electronic trade, which is used under the conditions of the functioning of digital trade platforms (Internet stores). Such digital trade platforms, as the forms of business strategies, are Amazon and eBay Inc. These two American companies were selected because the United States has the leading position in this sphere. The comparative analysis showed the advantages of participation of players in partnership with the use of electronic trade within two digital platforms, connected to cost saving on advertising and organisation of trade. The practical implications of implementing the electronic forms of business integration for the national companies of developing countries are also presented; they are formed based on the practice of implementing the advantages revealed in the activities of the digital trade platforms Amazon and eBay Inc.

The originality and value of this research are due to the further development of provisions on the specifics of the process of implementing the electronic forms of business integration under the conditions of digital transformation by market players.

The paper aims to study the main trends in the development of international trade in the era of neo-globalization and make forecasting scenarios that reflect the prospects and strategies for building international economic (foreign trade) relations. The author uses trend analysis, regression analysis, and the Monte Carlo method. The author proves that the digital economy determines the prospects for international trade in the era of neo-globalization. The author indicates several trends of international trade in the era of neo-globalization, such as the increase in the freedom of international trade (by 2.16%), the increasing level of globalization of the economy (by 4.11%), and the intensive increase in high-tech exports (by 74.94%). The most possible (28%) scenario for developing international trade is related to the digital partnership. In this scenario, a 25.11% increase in digital competitiveness provides an 8.29% increase in the globalization index and a 21.78% increase in high-tech exports. These indicators are achieved despite the growth of customs barriers by 58.86%. That is, a feature of the era of neo-globalization is the predominance of technological barriers over custom ones to the development of international trade.